Author Archives

Over the weekend, Steve Fuller published this blog post which has understandably been the object of many complaints. Steve is one of a number of people who have accounts which enable them to post directly on the site, without the… Read More ›

When I was first exposed to liberalism as a political philosophy, I was told that its founders were Spinoza and Locke, two thinkers who have always struck me as having rather little in common, except some common foes — especially… Read More ›

I’ve always been a big supporter of bursaries to ‘English’ (understood as a transitive verb) the dissertations of students for whom English is a second language. These students often have interesting things to say and deserve to have their ideas… Read More ›

First, citizens don’t vote for a representative simply based on who they judge as best matching their interests, but rather on who they judge as best matching their interests given the candidate’s chances of winning in the election. Second, the… Read More ›

I serve on the editorial board of several journals. In one such journal, the custom is to circulate all the articles that passed the external review process so that the board can officially give its approval for publication. We get… Read More ›

• Science is the epitome of human achievement, whereby we distinguish ourselves most clearly from other animals. • Yet, our best science says that our sense of superiority from other animals is false and quite possibly self-deception. • Either we… Read More ›

I originally wrote the following in October 2012, just after the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union makes the most sense when you consider the front-runners, which included Julian… Read More ›

January seems to bring out the social theorist in me. My last direct contribution to this topic was around this time last year, when a conversation with a graduate student at Warwick inspired me to propose a guide to reading… Read More ›

Fidel Castro was one of the political giants of the 20th century. Indeed, he was a ‘Great Man’ of politics. However, the greatness of politicians can be easily lost if we look at their careers from where they end rather… Read More ›

Twenty years ago Theodore Kaczynski, a Harvard-trained maths prodigy obsessed with technology’s destruction of nature, was given eight consecutive life sentences for sending letter bombs in the US post which killed three people and injured 23 others. Generally known as… Read More ›

Three facts are striking about the US presidential election: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, though she lost the Electoral College, which decides the presidency. Voter turnout was much lower than initially expected, and this meant that especially Black voters… Read More ›

The hostility to speed in the ‘accelerated academy’ predates the current fashion to complain about it and blame it on neo-liberalism. I was already reviewing a book by the Dutch sociologist and public intellectual, Dick Pels, on ‘fast science’ for… Read More ›

I find Brexit an endless source of invention – perhaps that’s my unconscious reason for wanting it drag out as long as possible, what I’ve called ‘Fabius’ Delight’. I shall get to the phrase ‘Population Snowflake’ toward the end of… Read More ›

The famed strategy of the Roman general Fabius to defeat Hannibal, the North African general trying to conquer Rome in the 3rd century BC, was simply to wait for Hannibal to get within easy range of his troops and then… Read More ›

In preparation for writing a review of the Unabomber’s new book, I have gone through my files to find all the things I and others had said about this iconic figure when he struck terror in the hearts of technophiles… Read More ›

This piece is another one of my several articles inspired by Brexit. Here I bring together two issues that Brexit has placed in harsh juxtaposition: Cosmopolitanism as a distinct ideology – whose ‘elitism’ Peter Mandler and Ross Douthat have recently cast… Read More ›

Max Weber famously presented three principles of social ‘stratification’ (‘organization’ would be better): status, class and party. The ongoing saga of Brexit brings to light some interesting features of the last category, which otherwise tends to be neglected or treated… Read More ›

Among the most striking features of the aftermath of the Brexit vote has been the speed with which the victorious politicians promoting Brexit have rowed back from their more extravagant promises about the extra funds and fewer migrants which would… Read More ›

The following first appeared on Al Rasub, a Dubai-based news website. *** The recent referendum resulting in a 52-48 vote for the UK to leave the European Union (‘Brexit’) is causing substantial political and economic ripple effects across the world,… Read More ›

Shortly after it was announced that those in favour of leaving the European Union had won the UK referendum, I was among the first to pounce on the fact that attachment to the European Union directly varied with age cohort:… Read More ›

So the 2016 US presidential race will pit Democrat Hillary Clinton against Republican Donald Trump. Who should be their respective running mates for the vice-presidency? To be sure, there’s some grim historical truth to John Garner’s remark that the role… Read More ›

Nowadays whenever students submit essays at my university, it goes through the computerized ‘Turnitin’ system that surveys the internet for textual overlap with previously published material, resulting in some statistical figure of degree of overlap. If the figure is beyond… Read More ›

I recently attended a workshop in which some very intelligent and informed people from several countries were brought together to discuss a range of topics that had been presented in advance as a set of interconnected, open questions. Although everyone… Read More ›

Yesterday I was speaking with a doctoral student, Morteza Hashemi Madani, about the point of social theory, especially given the recent revelation that Zygmunt Bauman plagiarises not only himself but also Wikipedia – shock, horror! As someone who has always… Read More ›

I was recently asked to respond to a variety of issues concerning academic ‘open access’ publishing, especially in light of the boycott of the publisher Elsevier and other related initiatives happening in Canada. These are detailed in this article in… Read More ›

Oxford neuropharmacologist Susan Greenfield has become notorious for arguing that the internet is warping our minds. Many people – myself included – regard her as a scaremonger. Nevertheless, in a recent history of neuroscience that I’ve been reading for other… Read More ›

This mini-essay forms the basis of my contribution to the ‘self-tracking and the emergence of hybrid beings’ panel at the University of Liverpool’s Being Human Festival on 10 December 2015. The reader will see that I’m not especially enamored by… Read More ›

According to Hegel’s bird’s eye-view of the world, the Owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk. If this bird is supposed to be the personification of philosophical insight, then we start thinking deeply about the nature of something only once… Read More ›

This piece is dedicated to Stefan Stern, who picked up on – and ran with – a remark I made at this year’s Brain Bar Budapest, concerning the need for a ‘value-added’ account of being ‘human’ in a world in… Read More ›

One problem that we have as teachers of sociology and social theory is that we are so quick to assert our authority that we end up inhibiting the honest and probing questions from our supposedly ignorant students. Nevertheless, these questions… Read More ›